


On the Other Side

by mintoche



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Final Haikyuu Quest, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood and Injury, Demon Oikawa Tooru, I hate tagging, Kidnapping, M/M, Minor Character Death, Supernatural Elements, noncon elements, woah yeah like major angst oof
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-14
Updated: 2021-02-25
Packaged: 2021-03-18 13:47:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28744221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mintoche/pseuds/mintoche
Summary: “You can learn to love me, Hajime,” the demon begs, grabbing at his shoulders. “Like you love him.”Loving him forever can’t be wrong.
Relationships: Iwaizumi Hajime/Oikawa Tooru
Comments: 15
Kudos: 59





	1. Every time I close my eyes

**Author's Note:**

> bc this idea wouldn't let me sleep, so here
> 
> work and chapter titles fm Dark Paradise by Lana del Ray
> 
> inspired by only in my dreams by wasted and a modern myth by northly (idk how to hyperlink) 
> 
> @lineal thank u for ur support i love u <3333333

_(He’s been dreaming of the ocean.)_

“Dude, are you okay?”

Iwaizumi shakes his head, snaps out of his stupor to see Makki peering at him.

He realizes that Oikawa and Mattsun are staring at him too. Oikawa looks at him with a particularly pinched, strained look.

Iwaizumi rubs his face. “Yeah, I… I’ve been having these weird dreams.”

Makki smirks at him, seemingly amused at Iwaizumi’s pain. “Oh, like sex dreams?”

Oikawa chokes on his Sprite (gross) off to the side as Mattsun snickers.

Once Oikawa recovers, he goes off on a trademarked whining tangent. “Iwa-chan! You ruined my shirt, you brute!”

How the fuck it’s his fault is beyond Iwaizumi, so he graciously ignores him.

Iwaizumi glares at Makki. “No.”

“Don’t worry, things like that are perfectly normal for a boy your age,” Makki says, leaning over to steal some of Oikawa’s chips. “Expected, even.”

Matssun waggles his dumbass eyebrows at Iwaizumi as Oikawa squawks in protest.

Iwaizumi scowls. “No…” he says, looking out over the roof, to the wooded area skirting the edge of the school grounds, watching as a white bird floats over the trees.

“They’re fucked up. Violent.”

He sighs, rubbing at his eyes. There’s an abrupt silence behind him at his words, completely out of character for his closest friends.

He turns around, confused, the midday sun hitting his tired eyes, blinding him for a moment.

When his vision clears, he sees them staring at him, horrified.

It’s Makki who breaks the silence first. “What the fuck.”

Oikawa’s eyes are saucers as he reaches out to clutch at Iwaizumi’s shirtsleeve. “Iwa-chan…”

Mattsun tilts his head. “What are they about?”

Iwaizumi looks at a spot over Mattsun’s shoulder and tries to come up with words to describe his…dreams. They seemed to be more than that, more vivid than any other he’s had before.

“They’re…I’m dying in them. It’s raining, and there’s blood everywhere and my chest _hurts.”_ He pauses. “There’s more, but I never remember when I wake up.” (No, that’s not quite it, he’s dying but there’s someone else there, someone familiar. He can’t recall anything but the pain of his heart slowing to a stop and an overwhelming sadness when he comes out of them. He always wakes up crying.)

It frustrates him to no end. He thinks that maybe if he could figure that out, who was crying, where he _was,_ these nightmares would go away.

He hadn’t mentioned them before because he didn’t want to worry anyone, share a trivial problem that would probably blow over all too soon, but it’s obvious that they had been disrupting his health enough to warrant outside attention. It might have been aggravating if Iwaizumi wasn’t so _tired._

They all look more horrified, if possible.

“Is there…is there something going on? Like something that would cause dreams like this?” Mattsun says, after a moment.

Iwaizumi sighs. “No.”

He just wants them to stop.

Oikawa’s practically attached to him at the hip, frantic. “Iwa-chan—”

Iwaizumi cut him off. “I’m fine.” He lets Oikawa clutch at him, though, the physical contact cozy, comforting him in his sleepy stupor.

“Maybe they’re night terrors?” Makki murmurs. It’s weird to see his usually irreverent friend so worried. It makes Iwaizumi feel bad, that’s he troubling them, bringing them down like this, especially on such a pretty day.

Especially since they don’t have much time left before graduation.

“You should go see a therapist if they’re that bad.”

Iwaizumi shakes his head, sluggish. “No, really, it’s fine, they’ll go away soon.”

He’s too tired to deal with their protests, so he ignores them in favor of looking back towards the trees. The bird is gone.

Oikawa sticks to him like a limpet for the rest of the day, not talking much in favor of staring at him with pale, worried eyes. At practice it’s worse, because at least they had some classes apart. There, Oikawa’s able to stick to him even closer. It’s worse too because Makki and Mattsun are giving him the same looks, although thankfully minus the limpet-ing. Their underclassmen are seemingly catching on to the weird atmosphere too, giving him sideways glances when they think he’s not looking.

Iwaizumi’s grumpy, more exhausted than usual at the end of practice. He wants them all to stop worrying, because he’s _sure_ that the dreams will stop soon.

He just wants to go home and sleep.

It’s strange. Despite the dreams, he’s still so tired; he slips to sleep so easily and much earlier in the evening than usual. Before, when Iwaizumi had bad dreams as a kid, he would push back bedtime as far as he could in an attempt to avoid his unconscious mind. Iwaizumi seems to have lost that impulse—but it doesn’t feel like something he can control, like there’s something else out there pushing him towards sleep. Which is ridiculous. He’s just tired; the lack of sleep is just making him woozy.

(But he sleeps so much now.)

Oikawa insists on walking him home and attempts to bully his way into his house, but Iwaizumi manages to shove him away at the last moment, claiming a procrastinated assignment that needed “no annoying distractions.” Thankfully, Oikawa leaves him to it with one last pout and searching look.

That week, he goes to bed earlier and earlier until he’s in bed as soon as he gets home from practice.

But despite sleeping so much, Iwaizumi gets more and more tired with each passing day. His mind gets fuzzier and fuzzier; he can’t remember things as well as he used to, the days before slip from his mind like sand.

(As he wakes up from his dreams, he starts to hear something like ocean waves smoothing over the shore, completely incongruous from the nightmares that had come before. He wonders what it means.)

His friends get more and more worried as the days go by, Oikawa in question particularly distressed. Finally, on Friday Oikawa forces him to go home midday, claiming that he’s “on the verge of death” or some other sort of on-brand dramatic bullshit.

Usually, Oikawa would have had his work cut out for him dragging Iwaizumi down the hall to the nurse’s office, but unfortunately Oikawa has no qualms with taking advantage of his weakened state. Maybe he could take a nap there…

“-chan, Iwa-chan! Are you listening to me?” Oikawa shrieks in his ear.

Iwaizumi tries to twist away. “No.”

Oikawa huffs, tightens his grip on Iwaizumi’s wrist and tugs him faster. “You’re terrible. I hate you.”

Iwaizumi hums in response.

They make it to the nurses’ station intact, where she takes one look at him and orders him to go home. It’s funny watching Oikawa try to make a smugly-worried expression work.

He waits in the office as Oikawa sprints to go grab his things and the nurse calls his mother. She asks if he needs a car ride, but he tells her that he can make it home alright, which is something that Oikawa does not take well.

“You’re going to keel over on the way home and I’ll find your dead body on the side of the road on _my_ way home and your ugly corpse will scar me for life—”

Iwaizumi manages to grab Oikawa and shake his shoulders, stopping his babbling.

“Hey. I’ll be fine,” he says, looking him in the eye.

Oikawa looks back at him, mouth a terse little line, eyes darting around his face before boring into his eyes, searching for something that Iwaizumi doesn’t think he has in him. He leaves Oikawa to it though, lets him fuss, as Oikawa is wont to let him do in return when Oikawa’s the one who needs support.

Oikawa brings a hand up to Iwaizumi’s face, swipes his thumb softly underneath Iwaizumi’s eye. His face crumples then, eyes watering.

Iwaizumi panics. “Hey,” he tries, softly. “Don’t cry,”

Oikawa sniffles, “’m not crying.”

Iwaizumi manages an eye roll. “Yeah, yeah. Sure.”

Oikawa shakes his head to refocus, stares at him directly again. “Hajime, you’re worrying me.” Iwaizumi startles at the use of his first name, a foreign tingle sparking on the nape of his neck, startling him a little bit out of the sleepy haze he lives in these days.

Oikawa brings their foreheads together. “Take care of yourself, okay? Go to the doctor or something?”

Iwaizumi grimaces, “Oik—”

“No!” Oikawa yells. “You’re worrying me, Iwa-chan.”

To Iwaizumi’s horror, Oikawa begins to cry again. He wraps Oikawa in a giant hug (the only solution for situations like these) and the idiot clings to him harder than he has all week, sobbing quietly.

The muffled little “please” he hears whimpered into his shoulder almost breaks his heart. It always seemed to be softer around Oikawa, more susceptible to Oikawa’s whims.

“Fine, you big crybaby,” he grumbles. “Fine.”

Oikawa keeps him there for a little longer before letting him go with one last squeeze and ‘stupid Iwa-chan,’ and watches him until he turns the corner, a petulant little dot in front of the school, like he didn’t trust Iwaizumi to make it that far.

Oikawa may have been on to something, he thinks, because on the walk home the world smudges around him, the sidewalk fuzzing in and out of focus. Somehow, though, he makes it to his house and into bed.

He hears the crashing of distant waves as the darkness takes him.

_(In the space between worlds, he falls. He slips into the ocean, towards the dark.)_

He wakes up somewhere that’s not his bedroom.

Did he…sleepwalk? To fucking where? This isn’t like any sort of place he’s ever seen before.

He’s in some sort of—he doesn’t want to say ‘bedroom’ because that word seems too informal to describe the luxury around him, despite the presence of, well, a bed. What’s the word? Ah. Bedchamber. This room is definitely a bedchamber.

Again: where the _fuck_ is he?

He sits up from where he’s sprawled on the floor, his uniform shirt catching uncomfortably on his shoulders. (The school uniforms _suck._ That shit was not made to be moved around in, and movement is something Iwaizumi in particular is rather partial to.)

The technology of the room is weirdly dated too, he realizes. There are torches on the wall instead of fluorescent bulbs, walls made of stone and mortar instead of the usual plaster and wood. There are no screens in the windows, which are curtained with big, heavy drapes that look like they’re made of velvet or some shit.

All in all, it’s weird, but what’s weirder is the energy of the room. It’s something about how the walls connect to the ceiling, the way the night behind the windows is too dark. He feels like he’s standing on the edge of a cliff, looking down, vertigo biting at his heels.

How long was he asleep for?

It’s strange, he feels more awake than he has in weeks.

…is this a dream too?

There’s a rustling behind him and Iwaizumi whips around to see…Oikawa?

It’s definitely a dream then, because what the _fuck_ is he _wearing._ Are those…thigh high boots? He must have eaten something really fucking weird that afternoon if _this_ is what he’s dealing with. Forget the ‘dying every night in his dreams’ bullshit, Oikawa’s devastatingly terrible fashion sense is the real nightmare.

He has horns, too, and red eyes, which definitely aren’t normal. As much as Oikawa likes to call him ‘an oblivious brute with no consideration to detail’ he’s observant enough to notice those tiny details.

Dream-Oikawa stares at him, stock-still. It’s weird; he looks absolutely enraptured, captivated, even. With a shiver that he can’t quite explain, Iwaizumi realizes that this is the same look Oikawa gives the other side of the court when he’s practicing his jump serves way past midnight, wild yet focused in a way that makes Iwaizumi afraid, because he knows when he looks like that he doesn’t care about himself anymore, just his goal. And the fact that he’ll achieve it, no matter the cost.

Iwaizumi looks at him, not wary of Oikawa, just the look in his eyes, which is somehow amplified by the scarlet in his irises.

“…what are you wearing?”

Dream-Oikawa flinches, raises a hand to his mouth.

Iwaizumi raises an eyebrow. “Are you okay?” He narrows his eyes. “Are you…cosplaying? Is that what this is? Because this is a bit over the top. Even for you.”

Oikawa finally moves, stumbles towards him. “It worked…” he whispers as he makes his way over to Iwaizumi. He sits there, watching Oikawa’s approach with a raised eyebrow. This is so fucking _weird,_ but he guesses that this might be a little bit better than dying every night.

Oikawa drops to his knees in front of him, raises a soft hand to touch him like he’s something fragile. He’s reverent, even.

He feels Oikawa’s fingers on his face, colder than usual. He tilts his cheek into the palm of his hand. “What’s up?”

Oikawa’s breath catches as his hand makes contact, his red eyes scanning his face furiously, like they hadn’t just seen each other the day before.

Up close, Iwaizumi realizes that there are more differences in Dream-Oikawa that he had previously overlooked in favor of his black horns and strange eyes. His hair is longer, leaning more towards shiny rather than fluffy…and he looks older. Taller and broader than the Oikawa he knows, which is annoying, but he also looks _tired._ Like he’s seen too much and none of it was good.

He wonders again why his subconscious is showing him Oikawa like this.

“You’re so young,” Dream-Oikawa whispers. Iwaizumi scrunches his nose, confused. “Wha—”

Oikawa interrupts him with a strangled sob, pulling him into his arms and a chest that’s bigger than he’s used to. Iwaizumi huffs, then begins to stroke bewildered circles into Dream-Oikawa’s back.

“You’re being weird,” he says, after he gets tired of Oikawa trying to crush him to death.

Dream-Oikawa takes a shuddering breath and clutches him tighter, smushing his face into his clothed collarbone. Iwaizumi sighs and lets him stroke his hair, rock him back and forth.

After a long, long time, in which Iwaizumi is almost done counting the exact number of stones making up the far wall, Oikawa stirs.

Oikawa draws back, not bothering to wipe his eyes before he cups Iwaizumi’s face in his too-big hands. Iwaizumi frowns. “Are you going to tell me what’s wrong now?”

Instead of answering his question, the bastard smiles softly. “There’s nothing wrong, Iwa-chan. In fact, everything’s all right now.” He strokes the space underneath his eye with his thumb, looking at him too tenderly, too intimately.

Iwaizumi leans away from him. “What the fuck.”

Oikawa laughs.

Iwaizumi growls. “Okay, so you’re not being helpful,” he says as he pries Oikawa off of him. “Where are we? How did we get here?” He stands up, looks at Oikawa again. “And, more importantly, _what_ are you _wearing?”_ Again, thigh-high boots? Seriously?

Oikawa smiles that weird, wistful smile again, still kneeling on the floor and being an absolute asshole who ignores all his questions.

Iwaizumi scowls harder, rolls his eyes. “Okay, so even in my dreams you’re completely useless.” Oikawa just laughs again in favor of the usual squawking a comment like that would have earned him.

Iwaizumi looks dolefully at him. “And you’ve gone insane. Predictable.”

Oikawa doesn’t say anything, instead props his head up on a hand and watches him with those strange eyes.

Iwaizumi huffs, then goes to try the door, a stupidly ornate thing that looks like it’d be hell to push open.

The knob won’t budge.

After a bit of manhandling, he kicks the door, frustrated. He hears Oikawa say behind him, “it’s locked.”

He turns around to see Oikawa standing now. “Why?”

Oikawa’s face goes hard now. For the first time in this strange dream, he doesn’t seem familiar. He looms instead of stands, looks with eyes that pierce instead of gleam. “You aren’t leaving.”

Iwaizumi looks at him, unfazed. “This is dumb.”

Oikawa gazes back at him, still sharp and different in a way that Iwaizumi can’t place. Like if he was looking at the reflection of Oikawa in a mirror, not his actual face.

Iwaizumi huffs. “Okay, whatever.” He heads over to the too-big bed. If he fell asleep to get here, maybe falling back asleep would let him leave? It’s the sort of dream-logic that’s just ridiculous enough that Iwaizumi thinks it may work. He thinks that’s what Oikawa would do.

He flops onto the bed, rolls over. The bed is too soft underneath him; he feels like he’s going to get trapped in it like it’s quicksand.

Oikawa comes over and lies down beside him, props his head up on hand again. Looks at him. Iwaizumi scoots away, annoyed. “Go away, you creep. I’m trying to fall back asleep.”

Oikawa ignores him, and with a strange look in his eyes—too focused, faceted with too many hard edges, _desperate,_ even—reaches over to touch Iwaizumi’s face like he had before.

Iwaizumi swats him away. “Have you ever heard of _boundaries,_ Shittykawa? Because I have them,” he snaps before rolling away from his best friend, who seems to be even weirder in his dreams than in real life, if that’s even possible.

He faces the wall and closes his eyes, trying to breath deeply like you’re supposed to or whatever to fall asleep.

There’s a small movement behind him, and before he can say ‘fuck off’ there’s a slight pressure on the crown of his head.

And he sleeps.

When he wakes up again, it’s warm. He yawns, snuggles deeper into his pillow…which has a heartbeat. And obviously isn’t a pillow, he realizes.

He rears back, knowing it could only be—“whathefuh,” he garbles, still halfway asleep.

He and Dream-Oikawa are cuddled up together in the center of the bed, Iwaizumi’s head pillowed on his chest and completely curled up in his arms just moments before.

He’s still in the dream.

Iwaizumi leans backwards, away from his psychotic best friend. “What the fuck,” he repeats.

He scrubs at his face. “I miss the old dreams, bring back the old dreams,” he groans. At least the ones from before had made some sort of linear _sense;_ at least he could wake up from them.

“You’re not dreaming,” he hears from beside him.

Iwaizumi ignores Oikawa in favor of sitting up and tilting his head back in exasperation. “This is what I get for letting Tooru make me watch Inception three times in a row,” he grumbles.

“…Tooru…” Dream-Oikawa says, a strange look on his face.

Iwaizumi swings around to glare at Dream-Oikawa. “Yeah, that’s you, dumbass.” Or maybe it’s not. This dream is weird as fuck. Not as strange as Makki’s asparagus dream from second year, but it’s getting close. (Don’t ask)

Dream-Oikawa doesn’t say anything, just leans forward, right back into Iwaizumi’s space.

“Oh my god,” Iwaizumi moans, standing up. “Can I just wake up? Please?” he asks the walls. “This dream is getting too weird. I want out.”

“Like I said, you can’t.”

Iwaizumi turns around, nonplussed. “What, am I in a coma or something?” He frowns. “Why is my subconscious manifesting as _you?”_ Iwaizumi buries his face in his hands. “This is so stupid. My own brain hates me.”

Oikawa stands up beside him. “You’re not in a coma, and you’re not asleep either, Oikawa says. “You’re awake.” He whispers something to himself afterwards that’s too quiet to hear.

“What?”

“You’re—” Oikawa starts. He pauses, thinking. “This is a different world than the one that you’re from. I—” he cuts himself off.

“You _what,_ Oikawa,” Iwaizumi says, choosing to ignore that first part.

“It worked,” Dream-Oikawa says again, looking at him like _that_ again.

Iwaizumi whirls around. “You’re a big fucking help, aren’t you?” He marches towards the door. Trying it again wouldn’t hurt. “Bye.”

Maybe leaving this room will help him wake up from this meta-as-all-hell dream. He didn’t know that he was this creative.

He’s almost to the door when a cold hand grabs his arm, jerking him backwards into Oikawa’s chest. Iwaizumi squirms, enraged, “let _go,_ what’s wrong with you today?”

Dream-Oikawa holds him even tighter, painfully so, hands almost claw-like around him.

 _“No,”_ Oikawa snarls—is that really Oikawa? He’s never heard him speak like that, never been startled like that by him before. He sounded like a wild animal. He freezes in his arms and Dream-Oikawa takes the opportunity to hold him even closer, tight enough that Iwaizumi’s having a hard time breathing. Dream-Oikawa drops his mouth down to his ear.

“I’m never letting you go.”

He sleeps.

When he wakes up for the third time, he’s alone in the room. He slumps forward, rubbing his face. He’s underneath the blankets of the ridiculous bed and somehow he’s changed his clothes. Or some _one_ changed his clothes. Whatever. They’re weird; looser and rougher than what he’s used to, but since this is obviously still a dream, he doesn’t pay it much mind.

A voice in the back of his that sounds just a little bit like Oikawa whispers that maybe this isn’t all quite what it seems.

Great. His subconscious really is manifesting as Oikawa, which is disturbing.

He throws the covers off and steps out onto the floor, wincing at how the cold floor bites his bare feet. He tries the door again, but it’s still locked, so he goes to his next best option for escape: the windows. The glass is all bubbled with age and it’s still dark outside so it’s difficult to see much of anything, but he can make out a dusky ridge underneath the moonlight, the edge of a downward slope. So, they’re up somewhere high. Makes sense for an old building like this.

Dreams don’t need to make logical sense, he tells himself.

But this doesn’t feel like a dream.

He pushes at the cold glass, trying to find any sort of weak point, runs his fingers over the seam between the pane and the wall, but nothing gives.

He tries all four windows and gets the same result.

He huffs, frustrated. So, the windows are a no-go. Figures.

Is this…an escape room dream? He groans. Fuck, he really does hang out with Makki and Mattsun too much, huh. They’re obsessed with the things for some reason that Iwaizumi can’t parse, because honestly, to him, they seem like a huge waste of time.

(Makki tried to explain it to him once. He said that it’s “like playing real life chess, bro,” whatever the hell _that_ means.)

The creak of a door behind him interrupts his internal friend-bashing session.

Iwaizumi whips around—it’s Dream-Oikawa.

Iwaizumi leans back against the wall. “I can’t wake up.”

Dream-Oikawa smiles, strides over to sit in a squishy-looking armchair that sits before a roaring fire that wasn’t burning when Iwaizumi woke up. Wait—what?

Iwaizumi blinks. “The fire—”

“Shh, Iwa-chan,” Oikawa smiles, gestures towards the adjacent chair. “Sit with me.”

Iwaizumi eyes him, but makes his way over to the chair. “What.”

Oikawa smiles so hard he’s almost glowing. “How did you sleep?”

He raises an eyebrow. “This is new.”

Dream-Oikawa giggles. “So silly, Iwa-chan.”

“You wanted to talk?” Iwaizumi asks. Maybe this is what will get him out of his dream, having a Deep Talk™ with Dream-Oikawa. Iwaizumi sighs. This really is what his life has come to, huh.

Oikawa’s face shifts. “I called you here.”

“Well, yeah, I mean you told me to sit—”

Oikawa shakes his head. “No. To this world.”

Iwaizumi stands up, exasperated. “This again, huh.” He’s stopped by Oikawa’s cold hand on his elbow. “I’ve been sending you dreams, calling you,” he says, voice gentle. “And you answered.”

Iwaizumi stills. “Wha—no, they’re just…dreams.” They’re just dreams.

Oikawa tugs him back, makes him sit in his chair again. “They’re more vivid than normal dreams; last longer, look different.” Oikawa gives him a piercing look. “Am I correct?”

“I mean—yeah,” he says, wary.

Oikawa smiles softly. “It was me, calling you. Every time you fell asleep I could work my magic a little longer, coax you to this side bit by little bit, and now,” he’s grinning now and it’s _radiant,_ “you’re finally here.”

Iwaizumi looks at him. The firelight glistens on his black horns, making them jump and dance in the dark of the room.

“You were probably tired, whenever you woke up in your world—which you’ll have to tell me all about, by the way,” he interrupts himself, almost laughing, red eyes flashing in a too familiar way. “Works of magic like this take up a lot of energy from both the caster and the subject.”

Iwaizumi blinks. Looks at Oikawa, his horns, his eyes. Blinks again. Gazes around the room.

He’s not sure if he’s capable of dreaming up something like this, but that doesn’t mean—no. He shouldn’t even entertain the thought that’s—ridiculous.

Oikawa reaches over, touches his chin with a finger. “But I’d do it all again, no matter the cost. For you.”

It’s Oikawa’s eyes that do it. It’s not the fact that they’re red instead of brown, or that his pupils seem to dilate like a cat’s. It’s those sharp edges right underneath, those facets of an unknowable diamond. This isn’t his Oikawa. This isn’t something he could dream up. He suspends his disbelief, throwing it out of sight. If he’s going to buy into this, he’s going to have the strength of his convictions and do it right.

(Somewhere, a voice tells him that he knew these weren’t normal dreams. That maybe they were never dreams at all.)

Shaking his head, he tries to wrap his mind around what Oikawa had just told him. “So…you, took me? From…from my world?”

Oikawa pouts. “I wouldn’t phrase it like that, but yes.”

Iwaizumi scowls. “Send me back, then.”

Oikawa just looks at him, puzzled. “But Iwa-chan, you’re home!”

“This isn’t my home.”

Oikawa’s expression shifts again, and the room goes cold despite the fire. “You’re home, Hajime.”

Iwaizumi ignores the use of his first name. “No, I’m not,” he says, one because he’s _not_ and two because who is he if not someone who argues with Oikawa at any given opportunity?

But this isn’t his Oikawa.

“You’re staying here,” Demon-Oikawa growls, eyes flashing from scarlet to maroon. It’s terrifying, but Iwaizumi’s never shied away from Oikawa, and he’s too proud to do so now even if he’s from a different world and has literal fangs and horns.

“The fuck I am,” Iwaizumi snaps, crossing his arms.

Demon-Oikawa full-on snarls at him, which would have been terrifying if Iwaizumi hadn’t experienced a thousand similar temper tantrums, magically-enhanced or not. Pissed off, because even an Oikawa who’s older and apparently somewhat magical throws a fit when he doesn’t get his way, Iwaizumi stands up again and storms towards the door.

With a yowl, Oikawa tackles him. They smash gracelessly to the floor, Iwaizumi pinned underneath an Oikawa who is a lot bigger and a lot angrier than he’s used to.

“What the _fuck,”_ Iwaizumi yells, thrashing. Oikawa doesn’t say anything in response, just presses his arms firmly to the ground. “Get _off,_ you psychopath!”

He thrashes harder, but he can’t seem to buck Oikawa off of him. If he was in _his_ world (fuck, he can’t believe he’s buying into this shit, but whatever) he would have overpowered Oikawa in a wrestling match like this, since he’s just the littlest bit stronger, but here it’s annoyingly one sided and Iwaizumi can’t fucking _move,_ dammit.

Oikawa, recovered from his tantrum, waits patiently as Iwaizumi eventually tires himself out and lies huffing on the floor beneath him. Oikawa cocks an eyebrow. “Done?” he asks, the cocky bastard.

“Let me go.”

“No.”

Iwaizumi tilts his head back so it hits the carpeted stone floor. “Why? If there’s another you here, there’s gotta be another me, right? Go annoy him.”

Oikawa freezes above him, which is a little bit better, but Iwaizumi gets concerned when Oikawa doesn’t move for a full minute.

“Hey are you—mmpff!”

Oikawa’s _kissing_ him, desperately, pent up and frenzied like he needs to or he’ll die. At first, Iwaizumi’s frozen, the situation that’s transpiring not really computing, because that can’t be _Oikawa_ that’s kissing him. Oikawa must take his stillness for consent because he takes one of his hands off of Iwaizumi’s and tilts his head for a better angle. Iwaizumi squeaks as Oikawa begins to lick into his mouth, and shaken from his stupor, he hits Oikawa’s shoulder frantically with his free hand in order to make him stop. Oikawa sighs in defeat, nips his lip with his fucking _fangs_ and withdraws.

They stare at each other, panting.

Finally, Iwaizumi finds it in him to say:

“Did you just _bite_ me, Shittykawa?”

Oikawa just hums and leans in again—“Nonono,” Iwaizumi stutters, pushing him away again. “We are _not_ doing that again.”

Oikawa pouts, but he doesn’t mean it because his eyes are glittering, pleased. “What, are you and your Oikawa not lovers?”

Iwaizumi chokes. _“No!”_

He smirks. “Are you sure, Iwa-chan? You seemed to know what you were doing back there,” he simpers.

Iwaizumi glares at him, affronted. “You just _molested_ me, what are you on?” he splutters. “Me and Oikawa are friends—I mean best friends, yeah, and he’s the most annoying person in the world so I don’t even—”

Oikawa slumps over him, laughing.

Iwaizumi squirms, even more uncomfortable with this even closer proximity. “Get off,” he repeats.

“Little Iwa-chan is so funny.” He looks back up at Iwaizumi, eyes wide.

“No,” Iwaizumi says.

Oikawa smirks, glowing in that asshole way of his that he somehow manages to make look good. “Little Iwa-chan~” he sing-songs.

Iwaizumi sees red. “Get _off,”_ he yells.

Still snickering, Oikawa gets up and offers him a hand. Iwaizumi ignores it and gets up by himself. He narrows his eyes at Oikawa. “Don’t kiss me,” he tells him.

Oikawa just grins and steps towards him, hand reached out towards his face. Iwaizumi swats it away. “Go kiss _your_ Iwaizumi, you big pervert.”

Oikawa stops at that, his face freezing into an emotionless mask.

Startled, Iwaizumi tries to find something to say, but Oikawa’s already walking for the door. Iwaizumi scrambles to follow him. He doesn’t want Oikawa to kiss him but he doesn’t want to be left alone again either.

“Wait—”

“I’ll send in some food. I’ll come back later,” he says, his voice devoid of any sort of warmth or underlying emotion.

He opens the door with ease, a quick flick of his elegant wrist, then pauses in the threshold. Behind him Iwaizumi sees a stone hallway with more tapestries and braziers and not much else.

Oikawa stares him in the eye. “Don’t try to leave. You can’t.”

He closes the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lin: dude stop listening to sad ost while writing iwaoi  
> me: *cocks gun* n e v e r


	2. It's like a dark paradise

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> first off, thanks to @tentativesapling, @lineal, and @umbreon_ly for their endless support!! LOVE YALL
> 
> Demon Oikawa: *spies our world iwachan in his magic evil demon scrying orb thing or whatever*
> 
> Demon Oikawa: *whispers, a single tear running down his face* 
> 
> Demon Oikawa: it’s free real estate

Iwaizumi had discovered that there wasn’t much to do in the room, fancy as it was. The bookshelves upon bookshelves of old books, bound in dusty leather and tarnished metal, are basically the only entertainment available, which is annoying. What’s more annoying is the fact that they’re written in a language that Iwaizumi can’t read, which is strange because he was _sure_ that he and Oikawa had been speaking Japanese earlier, but Iwaizumi guesses that weird magic demon castles function underneath their own set of rules.

There’s also what Iwaizumi thinks is a bathroom. Or the creepy old demon-infested castle in the middle of nowhere equivalent. Whatever. There was a suspicious looking pot that Iwaizumi didn’t want to think about, a bathtub, and a sink.

There was a shelf next to the tub stocked with towels, and more troublingly, strange jars filled with mysterious liquids. Iwaizumi had gone through them earlier to sooth his soul-crushing boredom. Turns out being kidnapped by a demon isn’t all that interesting once you hit day two of imprisonment.

They turned out to be nothing more sinister than sweet-smelling oils and lotions, which he assumed had to do with the bath and the sink.

This was Oikawa he was dealing with, who was as high maintenance as they came. Figures.

Oikawa had appeared in the doorway in the middle of this project.

“What’s this?” he had simpered.

Iwaizumi had looked up at him, a jar in his hand. “…is this…olive oil?”

Oikawa had beamed at him. “Iwa-chan, so smart!”

“Stop calling me Iwa-chan.”

“Don’t you let your Oikawa call you that?”

“Yeah,” Iwaizumi had said, narrowing his eyes. _“My_ Oikawa.”

Demon Oikawa had ignored him and proceeded to demonstrate how to use the sink and bathtub: he waved his hand over the sink once and it filled with cool, clean water; he repeated the motion and the water disappeared. The same was true for the bathtub. Oikawa had tried to show him how the pot in the corner worked but Iwaizumi had stopped him before he could.

“Thanks, I think I get the idea,” he had said, grimacing.

Oikawa, the bastard, had smirked. “Iwa-chan is so cute when he blushes.”

Iwaizumi, obviously, had scowled. “I said don’t—”

Oikawa had grabbed him by the arm and dragged him back to the main room. “I brought you lunch, let’s eat together.”

Iwaizumi had sighed and let himself be hauled to an ornate table that had appeared in the corner. He had ignored the lavish spread in front of him in favor of looking out the window into the dark beyond. Lunch, huh?

He had tried to make conversation, though, because he knew that any Oikawa, his or not, wouldn’t do well with being ignored. It was strange, how similar this Oikawa was to his own. The same passion in his eyes, the same mannerisms and expressions. Out of the corner of his eye they almost seemed to be the same.

But it was that shadowy vertigo, that dark-edged zeal in his smile when Iwaizumi looked at him dead on that gave this Oikawa away.

(And. Y’know. The horns. But that was a given.)

Iwaizumi forgets what they had talked about, exactly. Lately, Oikawa has been trying to explain to Iwaizumi how magic works, so he had probably been going on about how “all things must stay connected, Iwa-chan. All the moving parts of the spell, including both the weakest and the strongest points, have to remain linear. Relationships like these inside the casting circle cannot be severed…”

He talks like that a lot. About maintaining the right relationships and keeping the casting circle “un-breached” or whatever, with lots of winking and nudging.

Naturally, Iwaizumi tunes most of it out.

And if it isn’t magic talk, it was Iwaizumi-talk. Oikawa has apparently made it his mission to absorb every possible detail about him possible. However, every time Iwaizumi brings up _his_ Oikawa, he abruptly changes the topic, deflecting any sort of mention of his otherworldly counterpart. It’s hard to talk about himself without mentioning Oikawa though, because Oikawa himself is so intertwined with his life. Where Iwaizumi started, Oikawa ended. When Oikawa threw to Iwaizumi, he hit the spike and scored. He could hardly explain volleyball without mentioning him; explain school or his home without first addressing how Oikawa was the last piece that made them whole.

Demon Oikawa ended up leaving in a huff, annoyed with all this talk of _“that_ Oikawa.” This had suited Iwaizumi fine, since he had left the food behind.

It’s strange, but he doesn’t feel comfortable eating in front of this Oikawa. Like it betrays some sort of human weakness.

Oikawa never ate anything.

He shovels some weird meat thing (he doesn’t want to think about it) into his mouth, suddenly starving.

He thinks of Oikawa. _His_ Oikawa. How he always whines about eating, being hungry, how he loves milk bread, hates tomatoes. They’re teenage boys, athletes for that matter; their lives revolve around food and properly fueling themselves in order to ensure peak performance. He doesn’t know why, but the fact that the demon who had stolen him away didn’t eat niggles at his brain. It’s _wrong._

The dissonance strains against him: that Oikawa, this Oikawa. _His_ Oikawa, and the one that decidedly wasn’t. Not just the innate confusing nature of it, that was annoying, sure, but what’s unsettling him more is the fact that these two people— _entities—_ are different. They’re different people.

Iwaizumi and _his_ Oikawa are the different sides of the same coin. Iwaizumi belongs to Tooru, not some demon from another world.

(Where is this Oikawa’s Iwaizumi? Where did _his_ other half go?)

 _His_ Oikawa would be Tooru, then. This one didn’t deserve that title, that mantle of intimate childhood fondness, didn’t deserve the summers and quiet nights and games won and all those infinite memories between them that the name evoked.

So. There would be Tooru and Oikawa and they would be different people, separate in his mind.

Maybe this is how he stays sane, he thinks.

Iwaizumi rubs his face. He’s got to get out of here.

He looks up at the windows again. There weren’t any removable panes, but he could definitely try to shatter the glass. But his room seemed to be pretty high up so he couldn’t just jump down afterwards. He could probably rig up some sort of bed sheet rope thing like they did on television, but he wasn’t sure about the real probability of that working. He didn’t have any plot armor to fall back on if it failed. He also didn’t want to break the windows for no reason. Oikawa had been lenient so far, but he didn’t want to test him. There’s a hard edge to Oikawa’s smile that he thinks could cut him if he’s not careful.

The only other possibility of escape is the door.

Iwaizumi walks over to where it stands in all of its impenetrable glory. It’s heavy, he knows, and probably magically reinforced. He tries the knob again, but no dice. It lacks a locking function, so it’s definitely sealed with magic. He doesn’t know much about how magic works in this world, if it follows logic he could conceivably follow or not, but he sure as hell’s going to try to escape this goddamn prison cell, magic be damned.

He kicks it again just for the point of it then leans his head against the door. Fuck.

He’s really stuck here, isn’t he?

Wait.

The door had swung inward when Oikawa left, meaning that…

 _Yes!_ The hinges were on the inside of the door.

Iwaizumi fist pumps. Oh hell yeah, he could work with this.

He examines the hinges on the door. They look relatively normal, a set at the top, middle, and bottom. The two separate sides of the hinge are held together by thick hinge pins slotted through the hinge’s interlocking holes. If Iwaizumi could get those hinge pins out, the door would fall backwards off of the hinges and he’d be free.

But that didn’t account for the magic locking the door.

Fuck, he had totally forgotten about the fact that magic was a _thing_ here. He groans and rests his head on the stupid, _stupid_ door.

“I want to go home,” he mumbles against the wood.

Wait.

“Keep the casting circle un-breached…”

That’s what Oikawa had said, right? He pulls at his hair, trying to remember. He hates to say it, but he should’ve listened to Oikawa. He grimaces. What has his life come to?

Okay. Okay.

Oikawa had said that every spell had a finite amount of energy distributed through all the working parts of the subject of the enchantment and that said energy for the spell was provided by the caster. A bigger spell would require more energy and a smaller spell would require less, yadda yadda yadda.

(Oikawa had made a point of saying that only the most _powerful_ of magic users could cast complex spells, since they required massive amounts of energy, all the while preening about how the spell he had used to take Iwaizumi was one of the _most_ complicated out there. Iwaizumi had blinked at him, unimpressed.)

Since there’s a finite amount of energy available to a spell, the caster had to choose a focal point to the magic in which it was the strongest and thus the most effective. The power of the spell weakened the farther it got from the focal point until it faded away completely. Oikawa had said that the physical area that the spell took up was called the “casting circle.” He had then proceeded to babble mathematical jargon about how you could calculate the radius of the enchantment based on the inherent strength of the caster, heavily implying that his spell radiuses were _particularly_ large. Once Iwaizumi had realized that this was probably a euphemism for something he had absolutely no interest in thinking about, he had stopped listening immediately.

So, basically, if he could figure out the energy distribution of the spell and find its weakest point, he could break the enchantment, since the entire spell, i.e. the casting circle, had to be kept intact for it to continue to function.

Huh. Maybe Iwaizumi had listened to Oikawa more than he thought, which was vaguely troubling. Who knows what other bullshit he had unwittingly absorbed?

The working parts of the spell would be…he wracks his memory. Probably the door, the hinges, and the knob itself. That’s what he would include in his enchantment, at least. In all likelihood, the spell was probably centered around the doorknob, keeping the door closed with magic instead of an easily-picked lock, and therefore the strongest there. If that were true, then the remaining magic distributed to the door and the hinges would be exponentially effective at best. As a rule, hinges weren’t actually welded shut but instead just held together tightly by the hinge pins so that the door could turn on the axis of the hinge itself. The hinge mechanism was probably affected by the locking spell only an infinitesimal amount, considering that they were on the opposite side of the door and most likely at the very edge of the circumference of the casting circle. Iwaizumi doesn’t know a lot about magic, but he’s pretty sure that not a lot of magical energy had been used, considering the enchantment was probably just equivalent to a normal door lock and therefore relatively simple.

The hinges were definitely the weak spot in the enchantment. Removing the hinge pins would most likely disrupt the linear movement of the magic affecting the rest of the door, breaking the casting circle and disarming the spell.

Which makes sense, now that he thought about it. He’s a normal guy, so he definitely isn’t able to break through solid wood, so why spell that? The door knob was the obvious spot to place the spell, especially if the caster wanted to reinforce the deadbolt itself with some sort of locking enchantment. 

But no one ever thinks about door hinges. (Who would?) Hinges are the most vulnerable part of the door, (or that’s what his dad had told him when they were renovating the house and had to install a new front door,) and in this case, probably the most vulnerable part of the spell too.

Busting through the solid wooden door or destroying the knob wouldn’t be possible, but he could stick with his original plan of dismantling the hinge pins.

Or he’s completely wrong about all of this and is finally cracking under the strain of being stuck alone with this shitty demonic version of Shittykawa. 

Stupid magic. His brain fucking _hurt._

“This. Is. So. Dumb,” he says, smacking his forehead against the doorframe with every word.

Iwaizumi lets himself despair at his truly terrible and absolutely absurd situation for a couple moments.

He takes a deep breath and shakes his head. He’s going to get out of here. He’s got this.

He moves over to look at the hinges again, this time more closely to see exactly what he’s dealing with. He frowns. He’s going to need something to pry those hinge pins out. Something thin and hard enough to be able to get through the hinge mechanism and dislodge the pins. Fuck.

Would it kill Oikawa to have some random rods of metal hanging around his room? Huh?

Iwaizumi sighs. Removing the door from its frame is his best bet out of here, so he’s got to figure out a way…hold up. The metal plated books. One of the first things he had done in his solitude was go through the books in the shelves lining the room, and in doing so he had found a couple of ancient-looking tomes clasped tightly shut with (honestly, in Iwaizumi’s opinion, rather pretentious) locks.

Iwaizumi scrambles up from his spot in front of the door to get to the nearest bookshelf. It takes him a little bit, but finally he finds a book with a metallic cover, latched closed with little hinged locks. Bingo.

He thinks that they’re made of silver or some sort of similar alloy, so it’s probably soft enough for him to break off with some elbow grease. He takes the book and hits the locked side against the edge of the stone ledge jutting out from the bottom of the closest windowsill with careful, controlled force. He doesn’t want to hurt the hinge pins; he just needs them to be slightly loosened so he can fiddle them out. He does this a couple times, but stops when he realizes that he’s just going to damage the hinge and get the pins stuck.

Iwaizumi groans, defeated, and puts the book back. Well this isn’t fucking working. He’s going to have to figure something else out. He pulls his hair, fights back the impulse to yell. He wants _out,_ he wants to go _home._

Dammit, he wants Tooru.

He takes a deep breath, lets the thought of Tooru ground him, bring him back from the precipice. He grits his teeth. He’s going to get out of here and back to him, no matter what.

Who else is going to keep that idiot from killing himself?

As always, Oikawa comes back with his next meal.

“Do you have a lover in your world?” Oikawa asks, sitting in the spot right next to him.

Iwaizumi squirms in his seat, incredibly uncomfortable with this change in topic. “No.”

Oikawa raises a single, well-groomed eyebrow, chin propped up on his hand. “Really now?”

“Yes,” he snaps. “Also, stop saying _lover,_ no one says that.”

Oikawa tilts forward across the table. “Interesting,” he purrs.

Iwaizumi leans away. “It’s not, really.”

Oikawa reaches over and runs a hand through Iwaizumi’s hair. “That means that you’re not leaving anyone behind, yes?”

Iwaizumi has long since stopped trying to ward off Oikawa’s tactility and has become resigned to being pet like a particularly well-behaved dog.

Iwaizumi frowns. “That’s not—”

“I mean,” Oikawa cuts him off, “your family is one thing, but good friends can be more than that, you know?”

Iwaizumi tries to tamp down his temper. “What—”

Oikawa hums and covers his mouth with a light caress, stopping him. “What I’m saying, Hajime, is that you can find all that and more here.” He smiles. “Don’t you see? You don’t need him when you have _me,_ Hajime.”

Iwaizumi swats away his hand, taken completely aback. “He’s my friend, we’re—friends.”

Oikawa leans in closer, bringing his hand back to cup Iwaizumi’s cheek. His slit pupils widen as they look too closely. “Are you sure about that?” he says, low.

Iwaizumi’s heart rate picks up and he startles backwards, almost knocking over his chair.

“I—I’ve got to—” he gestures vaguely towards the bathroom before sprinting to it and locking himself in. He can hear Oikawa cackling behind him.

Iwaizumi slumps down against the door, staring at the opposite wall and rubbing his face. He feels like he’s a million years old.

Unbidden, the memory of demon Oikawa’s mouth on his comes to him. How the slide of their lips felt, how it must have looked like he was kissing his Tooru to anyone watching.

He props his chin up on his hand and considers the idea. Kissing Tooru. He’s never thought of the act of kissing and his best friend in relation to each other, but now that he does it makes more sense than he thought it would.

Huh. Kissing Tooru.

Gross.

Iwaizumi buries his face in his hands.

“I’ve got to get out of here,” he mumbles.

After an indeterminate amount of time Iwaizumi creaks the bathroom door open to see an Oikawa-less room.

He trudges over to the bed and flops down face-first. Ugh.

He had tried to remove the pins from the other latched books that he found, but the only ones that he had discovered were too rusted or tarnished to properly work with, which was discouraging. He’d have to find a different way to get the door open. Or find another piece of metal (or something else durable enough) that would fit in its hinges.

He stares at one of the braziers on the wall, watches the fire dance. He wonders how this room isn’t filled with smoke, since the fire isn’t contained at all. Magic, maybe? Iwaizumi sighs, rolls over.

Fucking magic.

Also, braziers are _so_ Demon Shittykawa. Dramatic, dangerous. Annoying. If Oikawa could do “the most complex of spells” like he had claimed, couldn’t he have summoned a couple of incandescent bulbs from Iwaizumi’s world? Could he ask? Loose flame wasn’t the most consistent source of light and Iwaizumi is starting to go insane, especially since it always seems to be dark outside, no matter how much time passes. He tries not to think about it.

Iwaizumi glares at the closest brazier. He would have settled for gas lamps, or even oil lamps, even though he was pretty sure those would smell awful. Whatever.

Iwaizumi sits up, eyes wide.

He jumps off of the bed and practically sprints to the weird attached pseudo-bathroom thing.

The jar of olive oil is sitting on the counter.

Iwaizumi laughs so hard he almost keels completely over.

“Holy shit.”

He grabs the oil, mentally thanking Demon Oikawa and his stupid obsession with skin care over and over again. (Tooru’s affinity for complicated beauty rituals seems to transcend even the borders between worlds. Incredible.)

“Holy fucking shit,” he gasps.

He grabs the book from before—the one he had tried to smash the hinge pins out of—and uncorks the bottle of olive oil.

He takes a deep breath to steady himself, and applies the oil to the upper hinge of the book. He makes sure the latch is completely covered, then taps the hinge on the side of the windowsill, where the rock is carved to a blunt edge.

He pries at the hinge with his fingernails, and after a while, the hinge moves an infinitesimal amount.

“Okay, okay, okay,” he whispers to himself.

Okay.

He develops a system: tap the hinge on the rock, twist at the hinge pin, apply more oil, repeat. After about thirty minutes, the pin is about halfway out. From there, it’s just a matter of getting it lubricated enough to pull completely out. He has to dump more oil down the hinge and twist the pin to cover it completely, but in the end it comes out intact.

Iwaizumi feels like he’s on the edge of tears. But like, happy tears. _Really_ happy tears.

Relieved tears.

He’s getting the fuck out of here.

He plans his escape for when he thinks the middle of the night is. He thinks that Oikawa's visiting at the same time every day, but that's completely subjective because he has little to no idea of knowing how much time has passed. He can't even keep track of time by sunrise and sunset, because they never come.

It always seemed to be night outside. He doesn’t know if it’s meteorological or because of some sort of spell Oikawa had cast, but he’s finally gotten used to it, which is troubling.

He still misses the sunlight, though. The moonlight is nice but never enough.

He manages to gather somewhat of a frame of reference when Oikawa brought him his meals: breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Assuming that time still passes in the same way he's used to wherever he is now. 

His only clue besides the meals is the moon itself; right now it’s near full and the only light in the endless dark.

He can’t imagine how daunting the night would be during the time of the new moon. 

The moon drifts across the sky, dipping low and then back up again as it makes its way across the darkened horizon, looping around to the expanse of sky behind the castle to start all over again. He assumes that a single day passes every time the moon reaches that low position on the unseen horizon. He had stayed up through his three regular meals and the gaps between a few days ago and the moon had returned to that same position, so at least that was consistent enough so that he keep track of the “days” passing. Every time the moon drops to its lowest point, he marks another notch on the inside of a bed leg.

Also, his meals seem to be regularly scheduled and Oikawa always spends them with Iwaizumi. He never eats, but he always seems to stay for an exact amount of time, almost killing Iwaizumi with his endless chatter, before leaving Iwaizumi alone again.

Iwaizumi assumes that Oikawa holds a pretty rigid schedule, then, if everything is planned so precisely. He also assumes that Oikawa is at the top of whatever hierarchy that holds sway in the castle. (At least, if Oikawa isn’t the only one here, which is a depressing thought.) It’s in the way he walks around the room, the set of his shoulders, the way that he looks at everything in sight like he owns it all. So, normal Oikawa stuff. He shouldn’t be surprised; Tooru’s the captain of the volleyball team, after all. It tracks.

It’s a guess, but the cycle of the moon and the pretty consistent meal times are the only clues he has, and he doesn’t want to take any longer than necessary to escape. He needs to get back, for his own sake as well as Oikawa’s. The idiot can’t survive on his own. And Makki and Mattsun and the _team_ and his _parents—_

He takes a deep breath. Freaking out wouldn’t solve anything.

He’s already getting antsy, pacing the floors again and again. The room’s pretty big, but Iwaizumi had always run free-range across the cross sections of his neighborhood and wild through the wooded acres beyond ever since he was a child. He wasn’t meant to be caged like this.

Tooru would have understood. He wouldn’t keep him trapped like this, caged like a zoo animal, going insane with untapped potential energy.

No matter how many pushups and squats and sit-ups he does, he never does manage to get rid of all that wild animal restlessness.

He has to get out of here before he goes completely fucking insane.

Anyways. He plans his escape for the fifth day. He doesn’t know if he has enough information to enact his plan properly, but he’s going to go insane if he doesn’t do _something._

He’s followed Oikawa to the door every time he leaves in order to see more of the space beyond his prison, but never glimpses much other than a dark hallway lit with smokeless torches.

And Oikawa always coos at him, at how cute it is for Iwaizumi to follow him to the door “like a little puppy, Iwa-chan!” which is another trial in of itself, but he bears it with grit teeth.

But the unknown beyond that locked door didn’t matter to Iwaizumi. He could make it up as he went after he got out of this goddamn room, he just needs _out._

He waits patiently, watching the moon dip down towards the horizon. The hours stretch into days, weeks, months, as his heart beats faster and faster, until all too quickly it’s time.

He grabs one of the softer leather books and shoves it into the crack beneath the door to keep it propped up enough to freely work with the hinges and fetches the smaller hinge pin from its hiding place behind a particularly boring-looking tome on the bottom of the nearest bookshelf.

He holds his breath as he works on the door, tamping down his hope, making sure to keep the door steady and level while he works. 

He works with a mechanical efficiency, not daring to think beyond the next basic step lest he get caught in a giddy haze and make a wrong move.

After what feels like an eternity, he slides the last pin out with bated breath.

There’s no flashing light or any sort of obvious sign that the spell’s been broken, but when he tries the knob, it turns freely.

He almost jumps up and _dances_ before he realizes that the door would probably immediately fall on him if he stopped holding it up.

He’ll dance later.

He lines the pins up parallel to the wall, bracing the door all the while with his hand. With the pins removed, the interlocking pieces of the hinge hang open. With the doorknob held open so the deadbolt doesn’t hold the door in place, he somehow manages to slide the heavy slab of wood forwards towards him, displacing it from the frame, and then to the side, making a truly ugly grating noise. He shifts the door this way and that, finally getting it all the way out of the doorframe. He then pushes it far enough to the side to make a gap for him to slip through.

He chokes down an ecstatic yell and squeezes through to the hallway, finally free.

And he steps out of his room—his prison cell—for the first time since he was taken.

He shivers; it’s colder out here.

But that doesn’t matter, because he’s _free._ He stifles down a laugh, breathes in deep. The air feels better in his lungs now. His legs are jittery and impatient, so he chooses a direction and just _goes._

He creeps down the hallway, those smokeless torches lighting his way gleaming sinister overhead.

He has to fight back a smile because it’s so _nice_ to be able to walk unchecked and of his own free will.

He makes it to a staircase that swirls slowly downwards in a tight spiral, which feeds into a carpeted corridor, which splits again. He chooses the left one—isn’t there some sort of rule about choosing the left path when you’re in a maze? This castle is fucked up enough to be one, he thinks.

(Or an escape room. He curses Makki and Mattsun for making him think about such stupid things.)

He makes his way through the castle, meeting no one. The hairs on Iwaizumi’s nape raise, spooked, when a brazier flickers on the edge of his peripheral.

The red flames look too much like Oikawa’s eyes. He walks faster.

He turns another corner, left again, and is met with a familiar face. He jumps and feels every nerve spark to attention.

“Kuroo?” Iwaizumi gawks. “You’re from Nekoma, right?” He had met him once, during a training camp months ago. He thinks that him and Oikawa may be friends, being the captains of their respective teams and all. They both seemed to have matching terrible personalities, so Iwaizumi had left them to it.

Fuck, he thinks. This isn’t good. If Kuroo and Oikawa are friends in his world then they’re probably pretty chummy in this one. This world’s Iwaizumi and Oikawa seem to be close, if Oikawa’s reaction to his name had meant anything, so personal relationships have got to be the common denominator across universes or something.

Oh my _god._ He sounds like one of those _Ancient Aliens_ idiots. He hates this.

The Nekoma captain in question looks like he’s seen a ghost and doesn’t say anything.

He’s wearing clothes as weird as Oikawa’s: a giant red cape and an ornate black tunic and—

“Oh my _god,_ you’re a demon too?”

Sure enough, Kuroo has those same oily black horns. He doesn’t know how he hadn’t noticed them earlier. Him and Oikawa are _definitely_ friends. Apparently, terrible personalities translate into this world as a set of horns and slit pupils. Figures.

Iwaizumi sighs and rubs his face, completely forgetting to be weary. This is all so _ridiculous._ He _hates_ this.

“Iwaizumi…?”

Iwaizumi looks up at his new demon friend. “What.”

Kuroo flinches and says nothing.

Iwaizumi groans. “Could you tell me how to get out of here? I want to go home.”

Kuroo’s eyes bulge at that last part.

“Oikawa, what did you _do,”_ Kuroo whispers, harsh and to himself, his face drained of all color.

Iwaizumi stares at him, waiting for him to say something more. When Kuroo says nothing else in favor of standing completely still, Iwaizumi realizes that he’s not going to be dragged back to his room. He turns around and walks in the other direction.

“Okay, bye,” he says. “Nice to see you, I guess.”

He picks up into jog because even though Kuroo doesn’t _seem_ to be all that interested in re-capturing him, he can’t rule out a change of heart on his part if he really is friends with Oikawa. He makes his way back to the previous fork in the corridor and takes the path that he hadn’t chosen before.

He thinks it may just be in his head, but the braziers around him seem to flicker like they’re blinking, following him like the eyes of an old portrait.

He hits another fork in the corridor, this time down another flight of stairs parallel to a giant bay window. He skids to a stop in front of it and presses his hands against the glass. He can’t help himself; this is all new, and after being trapped in the same room for days it's exhilarating.

The window seems to be overlooking the front of the castle grounds. The crags break for a bit in front of the castle, giving Iwaizumi a perfect view of a far-reaching body of water that glimmers in the moonlight at the foot of a rocky hill.

It’s beautiful.

He hears a rumbling, grating sort of sound behind him, shaking the carpeted floor beneath his feet. The torches flare.

“Shit, shit, shit, shit, _shit.”_

He sprints down the stairs, skipping steps as he goes.

 _“Fuck.”_ He hisses. That better fucking not be Oikawa.

He’s got to find a way out of here and quick, because he sure as hell doesn’t want to see his shitty demon overlord mad.

The corridor bends and then there’s just a long spit of hallway lined with closed doors shining ebony in the ruddy light of the torches.

There’s a hissing behind him from the stairway and Iwaizumi whips around to see spidery shadows dripping down the steps to creep up the walls, heading straight for him.

There’s another roar, this time closer.

Iwaizumi makes some sort of gurgling noise (he’s not embarrassed by it, he thinks this to be a perfectly reasonable reaction to being chased by fucking _shadow-tentacles)_ before whipping back around and booking it down to the door at the end of the corridor.

He considers trying some of the doors lining the rest of the hallway, but rejects that idea quick. That would definitely just slow him down.

As he sprints, every instinctual alarm inside of his brain goes absolutely nuts, blaring _danger, danger!_ (Yeah, like he wasn’t fully aware already.)

He bounces off of the door at the end of the hallway, fumbling at the knob.

It’s locked.

“No, no, no, no, no,” he mumbles, dazed. _No._

What a joke. He had broken through an unlocked door just to be stopped by another one immediately afterwards. And something tells him that he doesn’t have the time to remove the hinge pins on this one.

There’s a stillness behind him, so quiet it makes his ears ring.

Oikawa.

Somehow, he finds it in himself to turn around so his back is pressed to the door, hands splayed on either side of him, palm pressed down.

(Tooru had always said he was brave.)

Oikawa is both less and more than human on the other end of the corridor, a silhouette with horns and burning holes for eyes.

The demon steps down the hallway in the wake of the shadows crawling ever closer.

And Iwaizumi can’t _move,_ too terrified to do anything except force air into his lungs breath by inadequate breath.

The tendrils reach him before Oikawa does. He flinches as they wrap around his bare feet, then his legs, then his torso, creeping slowly upwards. They’re cool and matte against his skin. Lifeless, Iwaizumi thinks. Dead.

Then:

“Why did you leave your room?”

It doesn’t sound like Oikawa anymore. Doesn’t _look_ like Oikawa anymore.

Iwaizumi finds his voice, frantic in his captivity. 

“I want to go home, let me go _home!”_ Iwaizumi thrashes against the inky tendrils that are tangled around his entire body now, feels his heart pound impossibly faster in his chest.

Of course, _now_ he can move.

“I already told you,” the demon growls as the tendrils grow ever tighter around his arms. “You _are_ home.”

Iwaizumi flails, but the shadows fasten to his skin and to his growing horror, start to sharpen and almost _burn._

“Hey, stop— _stop_ you’re hurting me!” he yelps.

The inky blackness stops abruptly, then softens. Iwaizumi falls to the ground and scrabbles backwards until he hits the door behind him.

The demon seems to snap out of its rage; realize what it’s done. Its red eyes slow to a simmer, the darkness behind it stops thrashing and melts backwards into a normal shadow at its feet. It looks like Oikawa again.

(It’s not Oikawa, not anymore.)

(And he thinks, maybe this is why he hasn’t seen this world’s Iwaizumi.)

“Oh Hajime, I’m so sorry,” it says, almost sad. “I never meant for this to happen.”

It walks forward towards Iwaizumi with its hands outstretched like he’s a cornered animal.

(He is.)

It places its hand on Iwaizumi’s cheek. He tries to tamp down an involuntary shiver, but to his horror he doesn’t quite manage it. Iwaizumi closes his eyes, waiting for the punishment that’s sure to follow, but instead the demon coos and pulls him into his arms, shushing him as he begins to cry.

“Don’t worry,” it says. “You’re safe now.”

Oikawa lets him sob into his shoulder for a little while, but all too soon he’s being hauled back to his gaudy prison cell, Oikawa’s clawed hand a manacle around his wrist.

He knows better than to struggle.

They don’t see Kuroo as they make their way back. They don’t see anyone, actually.

(They don’t see Iwaizumi.)

They take a path to his room different from the one he had used to escape. Well, it’s either that or the castle is shifting around them as they walk, which is a notch too insane for what Iwaizumi is prepared to deal with at the present moment.

(Your crazy-demon-bullshit meter for today is full, try again tomorrow!)

All too soon, Iwaizumi is back in his room. He stares at the nearest brazier, trying not to cry as Oikawa fixes the door and spells it tighter.

He stands limply in the middle of the room, not daring to move from where Oikawa had led him.

Oikawa finishes with the door and turns around. The demon stares at the ground while its hands make fists, clenching and unclenching, its claws flicker in and out of existence with every jerky motion.

After a moment, so low that Iwaizumi almost doesn’t catch it:

“Why did you leave?”

Iwaizumi startles. He opens his mouth, closes it. He doesn’t know what to say, doesn’t know how to not piss off the demon in front of him. He’s afraid.

But he’s been afraid before, he thinks. The situation is new but the feeling of fear sure isn’t.

And yeah, sure, maybe he’s never faced off a terrifying eldritch being with the face of his best friend before, but who has? Unbidden, his mind latches on to the fucking _batshit_ reality of his circumstances. Strangely, he wants to laugh.

He takes a deep breath, centering himself.

He goes for honesty. It’s the easiest thing, and he never was the best with words.

“I don’t want to be here,” he says, “I—I want to go home.”

The demon looks strangely puzzled. “But, Hajime, you _are_ home.”

Iwaizumi can feel anger spark in his lungs, despite the fact that expressing it would get him literally murdered, probably.

“What?”

The demon smiles, and it’s too soft.

“You’re with me.”

Iwaizumi feels like he’s been punched in the gut. Oikawa’s still smiling at him, and it _hurts,_ he needs it to _stop._ It didn’t _get_ to—

“I don’t _know_ you,” Iwaizumi spits. “You’re not _him.”_

“So you do love him,” the demon hisses, eyes flaring. “I knew it.”

Iwaizumi pauses.

Does he… love him?

It makes sense now, when he thinks about it. He’s always loved Tooru, will _always_ love Tooru (and he knows it’s the same for Tooru; it’s the basis for their perfect trust so famous on the court). But he hasn’t considered loving him like this, but he understands now, he thinks. “Best friends” was never quite accurate, never could capture all that they were: the late night whispers and early mornings and perfect sets and shared bentos—and, well, everything.

Everything.

The bastard really has wormed his way into every facet of Iwaizumi’s life and he can’t find it in himself to be anything but incandescently happy about it.

Iwaizumi thinks he might be tearing up. He loves him.

Shit, he _loves_ him.

He wants to punch himself in the face. Of course he figures out that he’s in love with his best friend just as he’s on the verge of death, when it’s maybe too late. The fuck is wrong with him?

Oikawa shatters through Iwaizumi’s epiphany, digging its clawed hands into Iwaizumi’s arms. The demon’s eyes are wild, skittering around his face like it’s searching for something.

Iwaizumi thrashes in its grip, this new clarity belaying all fear and making everything else meaningless. “Get _off.”_

“You can learn to love me, Hajime,” the demon begs, grabbing at his shoulders. “Like you love him.”

“I’ll _never_ love you,” Iwaizumi snarls, shoving it away. He wants to yell, wants to tear everything to the ground, wants to hurt this, this—this _thing_ that had stolen him from his home.

There’s a single, frozen moment in which Oikawa is too still—so absolutely motionless that it betrays any sort of human façade.

It hits him as he stands in the static, not even his breath making a sound.

And then Oikawa _howls_ and it’s something so alien and _wrong_ that Iwaizumi can actually feel his heart start to jackrabbit in his chest as he realizes he’s nothing but the most fragile of prey to the monster in front of him.

Spidery black tendrils whip out from behind the demon towards Iwaizumi. He bites back a scream, but before he can flee they jerk from their deadly trajectory, hitting the walls and the ceiling instead of his delicate human flesh. They spiral around him as they tear the room apart, flailing like the limbs of a wounded animal in its death throes.

And as soon as the tendrils had appeared, they vanish.

All that’s left is a demon with the face of the boy he loves staring back at him with an expression that Iwaizumi never wants to see on _anyone’s_ face _ever,_ even the face of the thing that stole him from his home.

The demon staggers backwards to the door, scrabbling with its clawed hands to unlock it. The door slams shut behind it, leaving Iwaizumi alone in the ruined room.

He falls to his knees and wraps his arms around himself as he finally accepts that he’s probably going to die here. 

He doesn't move for a long time. 

Later that same night Iwaizumi fights the impulse to hide underneath his bed as the enraged shrieks of a wounded beast rend the moonlight.

Some time later, Kuroo visits him.

Oikawa hasn’t shone his face since…well.

That.

He doesn’t even come in for meals anymore. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner arrive on the table at their appointed times and disappear once Iwaizumi’s finished.

He knows that Oikawa will come back at some point; he just doesn’t know what he’ll do when he does.

He can’t sleep for longer than a couple hours at a time, despite his hardest attempts. Being constantly afraid may drain your energy pretty quickly but doesn’t necessarily equate to restful sleep, it seems.

But Iwaizumi has to get back to his world, so he eats the food that appears on the table and tries to sleep. Keeps up with exercises.

He _won’t_ give up.

A rally doesn’t end until the ball hits the floor, and Iwaizumi won’t stop until he’s dead.

He’s sitting in front of the window where he’s dragged a chair so he can stare out into the dark, trying to parse something, _anything,_ in the endless night—a way out, a breach in the castle’s defenses; some sort of salvation in the crags surrounding the castle.

Sometimes, he thinks he can hear the ocean.

He jumps up when he hears the door creak open, knocking his chair over in the process.

He sees a demon, but it’s not Oikawa.

His heartbeat slows.

“Hey,” Kuroo says.

Iwaizumi just looks back at him, weary. It’s not Oikawa but…

Well.

The demon walks over to a chair at the table and sits down, sighs.

“I’m—I’m sorry.”

Iwaizumi blinks. “What?”

Kuroo rubs his face. “Oikawa—he’s in a bad way, ever since…”

“Ever since what?” he asks.

Kuroo eyes shift to the side.

Iwaizumi glares at him. “Whatever. Listen, I’ve had a few pretty shitty times in _my_ life but I’ve never kidnapped someone to cope.”

Kuroo sighs again. “I know.”

Iwaizumi crosses his arms. “Send me back home.”

Kuroo looks at him again, chews his lip. “Only Oikawa can do that.”

Iwaizumi feels his blood pressure rise. He wants to punch something. (Or someone.)

(He wants to punch Kuroo.)

“Oh, of fucking course,” he growls. He kicks the fallen chair beside him.

Kuroo doesn’t say anything in favor of looking incredibly apologetic, which isn’t fucking helpful.

Then, Iwaizumi says something that he’s thought about ever since he had asked Oikawa about it his first day in the castle. He’s never dared to since.

“Where’s Oikawa’s Iwaizumi?”

Kuroo sits up, ramrod straight like he’s been tased (god, if only, he thinks) and hits Iwaizumi with a frantic stare. “What?”

“Y’know, like, how there’s a counterpart of everyone from my world in this one,” he explains. “There’s an Oikawa and a Kuroo from where I’m from too.”

Kuroo perks up at this, seemingly interested in a potential doppelganger, but Iwaizumi cuts him off before he can say anything. Tough shit, demon spawn.

“So it wouldn’t make sense if this world _didn’t_ have some sort of version of me,” he says, gesturing at himself.

He knows he’s got it right when Kuroo looks away from him again too quickly with his shoulders raised around his ears.

“So?” Iwaizumi waits.

Kuroo says nothing for a long time. Just when Iwaizumi’s patience has just about run out, the demon gets up and heads for the door. Iwaizumi doesn’t bother to follow him, just stays at his spot by the window.

Kuroo pauses in front of the doorway, back turned to Iwaizumi.

“I’ll…” he trails off. Iwaizumi’s ears have to strain to hear the last part.

“I’ll talk to him.”

The door closes behind him with a terrible sort of quiet finality and Iwaizumi is once again absolutely and completely alone. 

Every time he sleeps, he dreams of Tooru.

And just like before this whole nightmare started, he’s always crying when he wakes up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lmao the door hinge thing was totally me copying a mouse prison break scene fm Redwall bc it made my twelve year old brain explode and iwa is Smart Enough to execute it properly 
> 
> Also: I’m going to be 100% real with you, every time oikawa says “lover” I immediately think of the scene in the sonic movie where robotnik says “ah, so I see you’ve taken a lover” to donut lord because it’s the funniest fucking thing that’s ever happened
> 
> if you fancy learning how to remove hinges yourself


End file.
